The physical layer of most wireless protocols is traditionally implemented in custom hardware to satisfy the heavy computational requirements while keeping power consumption to a minimum. These implementations are time consuming to design and difficult to verify. A programmable hardware platform capable of supporting software implementations of the physical layer, or Software Defined Radio (SDR), has a number of advantages. These include support for multiple protocols, faster time-to-market, higher chip volumes, and support for late implementation changes. The challenge is to achieve this under the power budget of a mobile device. Wireless communications belong to an emerging class of applications with the processing requirements of a supercomputer but the power constraints of a mobile device --- mobile supercomputing.These implementations are time consuming to design and difficult to verify. A programmable hardware platform capable of supporting software implementations of the physical layer, or Software Defined Radio (SDR), has a number of advantages.